Words Fail ─ Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation

This book is concerned with matters of representation and failure, especially insofar as they indicate deep and often startling truths about the nature of spiritual and theological reflection. It turns to poets such as Paul Celan, Wallace Stevens, Adrienne Rich, Giovanni Pascoli and Giorgio Caproni because they are poets who sought directly to enter into the struggle with oppression that takes place within language. In this manner, they thereby illuminate the tensions present within the failures of representation in a rather profound manner.

The path which this study of poetic struggle against oppression and representation takes is one that links these particular efforts with various contemporary continental thinkers whose work continues to highlight the vast philosophical and theological stakes at play within these poetic endeavors. There has been much philosophical speculation on the potential failure of language as well as the search for a presentation of the 'thing itself' beyond representation. Here, accordingly, the book pursues the writings of a trio of philosophers, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Giorgio Agamben as prime examples of how modern poetry presents us with a profitable vantage point from which to survey these ongoing struggles of living in a highly fragmented (post)modern world.

Alongside these thinkers, this book looks specifically at the form of 'spirituality' that is given shape by this intersecting of poetics and theological-philosophical reflection. Such a focal point takes shape in the author's reflections on how poets' and philosophers' understanding of poetics and religious identity were offering rich suggestions about our 'spiritual' nature.

Colby Dickinson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago.